Virgin Galactic 02 launch live updates: Flight will take mother, daughter, Olympian to space

Virgin Galactic will be live-streaming the flight Thursday, starting with a countdown just before the release of the spaceship VSS unity from its mothership.

Tune in to the live stream here at 11 a.m. ET:

At least 800 people are waiting in line for their seat on the Virgin Galactic flight.

Customers waiting for their turn reportedly include Elon Musk, who paid a $10,000 deposit for the ticket, Richard Branson said in 2021.

Virgin Galactic started selling advanced tickets for the flight in the early 2000s. Though some early tickets were sold for around $200,000 to $250,000, they are now being sold for $450,000, with an initial deposit of $150,000.

These aren't the most expensive ticket prices on the flight — research and astronaut training seats can fetch up to $600,000, Space.com reported in 2021.

This is a suborbital flight, meaning it will not enter Earth's orbit.

Virgin Galactic's space plane, called the VSS Unity, is not powerful enough for that.

Instead, if all goes according to plan, a double-fuselage aircraft called "VMS Eve" will serve as a mothership and carry the spacecraft roughly 10 miles above sea level. Then it will drop the VSS Unity.

The pilots must then fire the rocket plane's engines, tilt its nose toward the heavens, and roar upwards another 45 miles or so.

Near the peak of the flight, more than 50 miles above the ground, the plane will glide.

With the curvature of the Earth stretching below and the blackness of space looming above, the passengers will be able to unbuckle, float weightlessly around the cabin, and gawk out the plane's 17 windows. That will last about five minutes until the plane begins to fall back to Earth.

The passengers will not fly above the Kármán line, which is sometimes considered the threshold of space at 62 miles above sea level. But the Federal Aviation Administration has previously recognized VSS Unity pilots as astronauts.

This is Virgin Galactic's second commercial flight, but it's the first to carry paying customers. In June, Galactic 01 carried a three-person crew from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy.

Before that, the company's space plane had only flown employees and its billionaire founder, Richard Branson.

Virgin Galactic plans to fly paying customers to the edge of space every month.

Goodwin competed in canoeing in the 1972 Munich games. He is set to be the first Olympian to travel to the edge of space, and the second person with Parkinson's disease.

Goodwin bought his ticket 18 years ago for $250,000, making him the fourth person to snatch a commercial seat on a Virgin Galactic flight, he told Sky News. He added that he "certainly did" worry it would never happen.

Schahaff is a health and wellness coach. She won two tickets in a raffle to raise funds for the nonprofit Space for Humanity. She's bringing her 18-year-old daughter, Mayers, who is a philosophy and physics student at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

They will be the first people from Antigua and Barbuda to take a spaceflight, according to Virgin Galactic.

The trio participated in a five-day readiness program in New Mexico, designed to prepare them "physically, mentally and spiritually" for the trip, according to the company.

Beth Moses, Chief Astronaut Instructor for Virgin Galactic, is set to join the passengers in the cabin of the VSS Unity for the flight. The company's pilots CJ Sturckow and Kelly Latimer are slated to fly the space plane.